Department
of Movement Sciences
Leuven Brain
Institute
KU Leuven, Belgium
Surname: JJ
Mastodon: @jjodx@neuromatch.social
(BlueSky: @jjodx.bsky.social)
Email: jj.orban AT kuleuven DOT be
Address: Gebouw De Nayer, room 01.55
Tervuursevest
101 - box 1501
3001 Leuven
Belgium
I am an engineer in applied mathematics who did his PhD (2002-2007) on computational neuroscience at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium). During my PhD, I focused on eye movements with applications to clinical populations. I went on to pursue my post-doctoral work (2008-2010) with Reza Shadmehr at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD, USA) where I used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to investigate the role of the motor cortex in motor adaptation. My post-doctoral stay at Hopkins was partially supported by a Fellowship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation. Then, I secured independent funding from the Brussels region (2011-2014: 610 000€) in order to pursue my research as an independent investigator at UCLouvain on how theories of motor control can be successfully applied to understand brain functions in health and disease.
Since December 2014, I am a Professor (2014-2019: assistant; now associated) at the department of Movement Sciences at KU Leuven where my project focuses on the effect of aging and neurological disease on motor control and learning via a multimodal approach (behavior, brain stimulation, EEG and structural MRI).
In addition, I am one of the founding member of the BRain Activity, Imaging & NeuroStimulation for HUman Behaviour research platform (BRAINS-HUB, KU Leuven, Belgium) for which we received a small equipment grant from KU Leuven and, as co-PI, a large Hercules grant.
Finally, I decided to use state-of-the-art research methodologies for the research in my laboratory. All papers are first published as preprints (e.g. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/292250v2). All data and code are made available on the Open Science Framework (e.g. https://osf.io/vncce/) and studies are pre-registered when possible (https://osf.io/n8bwf/). In addition, I try to provide several lines of evidence to backup the claims in my papers by replicating my own results and using larger group of participants (N=20 or 30 per group). One of our latest paper (Vandevoorde and Orban de Xivry 2019) is a good example of what we wants to achieve in the laboratory.
2019 - current: Associate Professor in the Movement Control and Neuroplasticity Group, Faculty of Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium.
2014 - 2019: Assistant Professor in the Movement Control and Neuroplasticity Group, Faculty of Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium.
2011-2014: Post-Doc at Université catholique de Louvain with Philippe Lefèvre sponsored by the Brussels region (Grant Brains Back to Brussels).
2007-2010: Post-Doc in the Laboratory of Computational Motor Control (Johns Hopkins University, USA) under the supervision of Prof. Reza Shadmehr.
2002-2007: PhD student at CESAME and Laboratory of Neurophysiology (UCL, Belgium). Thesis: Tracking the invisible requires prediction and internal models. Promotor: P. Lefèvre.
1997-2002: Study of engineer in applied mathematics. Master thesis: “Modeling of anticipatory responses build-up in repetitive oculomotor tasks” with P. Lefèvre and G. Blohm
2024-2027: FWO senior research project: Multifaceted approach to investigate position sense in health and disease (co-PI: An De Groef)
2023-2026: C2 project (internal grant from the KU Leuven): MAeSTRo: neuro-Musculoskeletal ASsessement and TRaining for safe (e-)cycling (co-PI: Friedl De Groote)
2023-2026: collaborator on a C2 project (internal grant from the KU Leuven) awarded to Geert Verheyden: Robust: integrated ROBotic Upper limb sensorimotor rehabilitation after STroke to improve behavioural, objective and real-life outcome
2022-2024: Collaborator on a New Frontiers in Research Fund - Exploration grant entitled: “A unifying principle of cerebellar function” led by Mireille Broucke and Denise Henriques
2021-2024: FWO senior research project: Is there a motor reserve in the cerebellum?
2018-2020: collaborator on a C2 internal Grant from KU Leuven with Geert Verheyden: Towards understanding upper limb rehabilitation after stroke
2017-2021: Internal Grant from KU Leuven with Alice Nieuwboer: Mechanisms of non-invasive brain stimulation to enhance consolidation of motor learning in Parkinson’s disease
2019: Hercules Grant (large equipment) from the FWO: Integrated Platform for Closed-Loop Motor Training and Adaptive Neuromodulation (CLAN, co-PI, 878000€)
2018: Small equipment grant from the KU Leuven: Translational upper limb platform (TULiP) (main PI, 87 000€)
2016-2018: Krediet aan Navorser from the FWO
2015-2019: Starting grant from the KU Leuven
2014-2016 Collaborative Grant with Daichi Nozaki (University of Tokyo, Japan) funded by FNRS (Belgium) and JPSP (Japan)
2011 Travel Award to NCM meeting
2010-2016: Grant Brains Back to Brussels from the Brussels region (2010-2013, renewed for 2014-2016).
2009: Award from “Fondation pour la vocation” Belgium
2009 Travel Award for the Computational principles of sensorimotor learning (Irsee, Germany)
2007: Grant from the Belgian American Educational Foundation
2007: Grant “Fonds spéciaux de recherche” from the Université catholique de Louvain
2007:Grant “Bourse de séjour scientifique” from the “Fonds National pour la Recherche Scientifique”, Belgium